Optimus Flow Review

Optimus Flow is an impressive futures trading platform with excellent features and unique functionalities.

By Alexander Voigt | Updated June 14, 2023

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Optimus Flow is the in-house trading platform of Optimus Futures, developed by traders for traders. It has a clean interface, fast order execution and enhanced functionalities with 40+ analytical and trading panels. But is it really worth it? How much does Optimus Flow cost, and what exactly can you expect when you trade futures on it? Find out all your questions answered in this Optimus Flow review.

Features

Charts

Optimus Flow supports 8 advanced chart types. Besides the regular candlestick and line charts, users can choose time-based charts, Renko, Line Break, Point & Figure, and Heiken-Ashi visualization, plus tick charts and range bars.

Chart Trading

Optimus Flow has enhanced chart trading capabilities. Users can trade directly from the chart by using the mouse or hotkeys. You can pre-configure the number of futures contracts traded, order types, and you can go even a step further and define a target and stop loss in ticks.

Indicators

72 different indicators are currently available, including volume, moving averages, Fibonacci, Gann, various oscillators, and more.

Chart Overlays

How does the ES develop compared to other futures markets? The overlay chart visualizes the performance per underlying asset relative to each other.

Order Types

Market Order: If you want to execute your trade immediately, the market order is the best choice for guaranteed trade execution.
Limit Order: You may be sensitive to the price of the trade execution. In this case, the limit order is the best choice.
Stop Order: The stop order is used for trade management and converts into a market order once the price was reached.
Time In Force Option: Traders can define the validity time of each order and can use Good Till Date, Good Till Canceled, Immediate Or Cancel, Fill Or Kill, and valid for a Day orders.

A cool feature is the bracket orders where a stop loss and take profit can be transmitted simultaneously. Once one of the orders got filled, the other get’s canceled. When one order gets filled partially, the number of contracts for both order legs is reduced accordingly.

Traders who like to use a trailing stop can also define that the stop loss level get’s trailed by a chosen amount of ticks. So whenever the price per contract goes in a favorable direction, the stop loss level within the bracket order gets trailed.

DOM Trading

The DOM represents a full view into the order book of an exchange. You see the contracts on the buy and sell-side, and you can place your orders directly from the DOM via mouse click or hotkeys. Order can also be modified directly from the trading DOM.

Order Flow Trading

The order flow analysis trading functionalities make Optimus Flow a one-of-a-kind futures trading program. Other platforms have some similar features, but Optimus Flow combines access to cluster charts, volume profile, the unique Order Flow Surface and TPO Profile charts in one easy-to-use platform.

Cluster chart: Price, volume and time are used to visualize the order flow in one chart. Instead of looking at normal candlesticks where you see only the open, high low and close of a period, the cluster chart shows where the most contracts have been traded with the numbers of contracts traded per price level.
Volume profile: These days, many platforms support volume profile analysis, where you see visual details without the number of contracts traded as numbers per time interval. You may call it cluster chart light.
Order Flow Surface: The Order Flow Surface enables you to look at the real-time tick by tick data stream to visualize huge orders and a heatmap functionality. It is like an x-ray functionality that shows support and resistance levels tick by tick with color-coding. For example, the brighter the color, the stronger is the volume at the respective level. This way, you do not only see the DOM in real-time, but you also see the historical DOM developments.
TPO Profile Chart: This advanced visualization functionality shows the price action in a unique way. TPO stands for time price opportunity with value areas and the point of control. The TPO profile chart gives you a better understanding of at which price level the asset spent the most time.

Make sure to check out the Optimus Futures YouTube channel to learn more about these advanced visualization and analysis tools.

Options Trading

Besides futures, you can also trade options via Optimus Futures by using the Optimus Flow platform. The options feature is called Option analytics and represents a classic options chain.

Trade Automatization

Traders can define various trading strategies and automate trade execution by using the integrated Strategy Runner feature. There are some pre-configured strategies available, but you can also write your own strategies via C#.

Paper Trading Simulator

Paper trading is a great way to test new automated strategies and to evaluate new ways of making money trading the markets by placing orders in a real-time environment without risk. The paper trading functionality can be turned on at any time to trade with paper money.

Market Replay

The market replay functionality is an exciting alternative to the paper trading simulator to go back in time and test how you would have reacted to specific market movements. It is not real-time but is an exciting feature, for example, to analyze the intra-bar price action tick by tick.

End-of-Bar Order Placement

This feature allows traders to execute orders at the bar’s open, low, high, or close. EBO is an excellent tool for those who want to develop a discipline in trading and trade only when the market verifies the validity of their setup.

Profit and Loss Alerts

Specify a certain profit or loss your contract has reached to trigger an alert.

Time Alerts

Set an alarm if you want to stay within a specific time length for a contract. Example: you wish to be in the E-mini SP for only 30 seconds.

Platform Cost

A live account with a $500 account minimum at Optimus Futures is needed to unlock access to the Optimus Flow trading platform. The platform by itself is free to use for clients.

However, like with any futures broker, order routing fees, exchange execution fees, NFA fees and exchange data fees apply depending on the chosen order routing and market data subscriptions.

Data Feeds

To trade futures, you need to subscribe to a data feed provider and to market data. Optimus Flow can be connected with the data feed providers like Rithmic, CQG, and OANDA. In addition, futures exchanges require users to pay for market data.

System Requirements

Optimus Flow is a trading platform that has to be installed on your local PC. Optimus Flow cannot be used via browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge. That makes sense since it is a platform focusing on speed and excellent trade executions.

Optimus Flow Review Summary

Optimus Flow combines the best elements of the retail trading and institutional trading sector. Optimus Flow comes with core capabilities like charts, account info, order entry tools, market depth and times and sales details.

And it goes a step further with integrated complex analysis tools like heatmap, order flow and TPO Profile, plus backtesting features and automation via C#.

One thing that makes Optimus Flow stand out from the competition while analyzing the platform was the insane speed. The platform navigation is fast, and the connected data feeds have low latency, and you feel the beat of the market.

For evaluation purposes, the free day trader plan is a good choice, while the lifetime license with all features enabled is the best value for long-term users.

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